I fell in love with LeVan Vanderbilt at my boss’s boutique.

Maybe I always loved him.

I’d never really know. Not that it mattered once I’d fallen.

My heart was his. Nothing could ever change that. Not even the fact that the gorgeous object of my affection had no idea what was going on in my naïve teenage mind.

His mother was off catching up with my boss, and I was still pretty shell-shocked, both from seeing him here where I worked, and from the opportunity to make an impression on his mother with my fashion design skills, my life’s one true passion. If I could, I’d have gone back to the front window to gaze after LeVan again, but I had work to do in the back.

My workshop where I did the main designing and piecing together was in the very back. I didn’t do the actual sewing of the garments anymore; Tammy said she could get that done faster and fairly cheap, which would free up more time for me to design and assemble more dresses, although that meant I had several of them in varying stages of completion in the workroom at any given time and they took up almost as much room as my table.

The fabrics took up the most room. It was when I had six bolts in my arms that a familiar voice said from near me, “Let me help.”

Startled, I looked up to see LeVan standing in the narrow passageway between the boutique’s main room and the stock and storage rooms in the back. He stood in my path, which prevented me from going anywhere while he tugged at the top few bolts in my arms to help.

“I got them,” I insisted, but there was no firmness to my voice. Not now that LeVan was close enough to cause my heart to race and my eyes to wander up to his again.

He let out a soft sigh, but not of impatience. It sounded like a moan. “My mom asked me to give you a hand. You’re not going to let me disappoint her, are you?”

The gleam in his eyes and the light humor in his voice made his suggestion sound so reasonable. A moment later, as he pulled the majority of the bolts out of my arms—more than the few he’d initially tried to take from me—I just stood there, entranced, admiring his form from this vantage point behind him.

God, was he ever beautiful.

I was still staring when he made it to the end of the long, narrow hall.

“Are you coming, pretty lady?” he asked. “My guess is she’s done talking about whichever one of us she was trying to get rid of by now.”

“What?” Fumbling to rearrange my pitifully light load, I strode to catch up with him. “Who?”

“Mom.” There was a laugh in his voice, one caught between a scoff and a chuckle.

“Why? Is she upset with me? Did I do something wrong?”

Shit, I hoped I hadn’t upset her already. The Vanderbilts were one of the most well-liked families in the county. Sure, they were loaded, but people actually liked and respected them. My family, the Kents, were also one of the wealthier families. But no one respected my mother. She didn’t deserve respect. Being aloof and unkind was her default setting.

No one in town ever said it to me, but I saw the expressions on people’s faces, the distance they put between themselves and my mother every chance they got. It took me years to figure it out, but people just didn’t like Melody Kent. She wasn’t a nice person. Not to me, not to them, and possibly not to anyone in this world. So, if Mother were to come to where I worked and cause a scene here, Tammy would wave it off.

But the Vanderbilt family was a different beast entirely. I couldn’t afford to be out of favor with them. Not that I believed I did anything to cause it. I was truly stumped at LeVan’s comment.

“Why would you think you’d pissed her off?” LeVan asked.

“Well, you just said she was trying to get rid of one of us.”

He paused at the door, the area dim now except for the narrow slivers of light coming in from around the doorframe and what little filtered in from the back rooms. Still, it was enough to make out the shadows that framed his face, and from what I could see in those hypnotic eyes, he was searching…seeking.

“I…never mind. I don’t need to know. I worry too much,” I said before he could reply. It was a lie. Lying was something I did far too easily, something I’d developed as a protective mechanism after too many incidents when Mother would grab my arm, fingers digging in cruel and tight as she yelled, or nights when I didn’t sleep at all and ended up dozing during class. I couldn’t exactly tell my teachers that my mother was the cause.

“We shouldn’t keep them waiting,” I said cheerfully, the note in my voice so false, it hurt my ears to hear it. Pushing ahead of him, I sailed into the main room and stopped in front of his mother.

She was chatting easily with Tammy and glanced up at me, but one look had the words dying on her lips. “Good Lord, sweetheart. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” I was, again, lying through my teeth and I had no idea why I suddenly felt more fragile and exposed than I’d ever felt in my life, but damned if I’d let some sweet lady with a beautiful smile and that man behind me, the most gorgeous man I’d ever met, see how raw and exposed I felt.

* * *

“Come on. Let’s have some milk and cookies!” Tammy closed up the shop fifteen minutes early and turned to me with a wide smile and eyes that revealed nothing.

That worried me.

Usually, when I couldn’t see what someone felt, it was because they were working hard to conceal it, and that never spelled good things. I’d learned to read moods and gauge people early on—it had been a necessity living with someone like my mother, then as Nicky got older and it was made clear that he was…different, being able to read him had helped me as I became more and more of a caretaker.

I knew how to read people.

Tammy wasn’t someone who was hard to understand.

She was beaming at me with her smile, but her eyes were telling me a different story. She wasn’t happy.

“Am I fired?”

The words escaped me without any real conscious thought that I’d say them.

Tammy blinked, and the mask fell away. “Heavens, girl. If I fire you, I might as well sell the store!” Flapping her beringed hands at me, she said, “Sit, sit…I just…well, something was made clear to me and I thought it best just to go ahead and get it out of the way.”

She harrumphed and picked up something from the counter behind her. It was a slip of paper. She urged me to sit down, and after I did, she gave it to me. “Here. It’s your bonus,” she said brightly.

“My…” I unfolded the piece of paper, which turned out to be a check.

One for fifteen hundred dollars. “What…what’s this?”

“Your bonus,” she said again. “I made more money this past year in custom clothes than I have in the past, I don’t know, five years combined. And it’s because of you. When Toya mentioned a bonus a little while ago…well…” She laughed a little. “Nobody else has offered a bonus, honey. That bonus is yours—she’s already prepaid five hundred of it. She’s expecting stellar work, no doubt. But…the rest…well. You keep the costs down and your designs…” She shrugged. “I should’ve been paying you a commission for every piece you’ve helped sell, and I haven’t. Perhaps this makes up for it.”

“I…” Shaking my head, I whispered, “I don’t know what to say.”

Fifteen hundred dollars. And I had earned it.

“I never had this kind of money in my life,” I finally told her.

She gave me a thorough study, then nodded slowly. “Some people might not believe that, what with your family and all.”

Blood rushed to my cheeks. “Oh, it’s not like—”

“Sweetheart.” Tammy covered my hand. “I know you’ve never wanted for anything material in your life.” She inclined her head. “I also suspect your mother doesn’t know anything about you working here. Does she?”

“I…” Oh, shit. Back when Tammy hired me, I needed parental permission for the job, but I’d sort of…forged Mother’s signature. That was something else I’d gotten good at. If I wanted to be able to do any of the normal things the kids in my class got to do, like a field trip to the fricking zoo, I’d learned how to forge her name early on. It had become second nature to nonchalantly sign her name on whatever document was given to me, turning it in the next day. If money was needed, then I knew where to find that, too—her wallet. She never kept track of her cash very well, and if some went missing, she’d probably assume she’d spent it at the liquor store or when she went out shopping in Baton Rouge.

Maybe it was terrible, but I’d learned the hard way what happened when I asked for money.

It could come with cold indifference or a raised fist, but the answer was never yes.

I’d figured that out by the time I was in fourth grade.

By sixth, I’d perfected the art of hiding bruises and forging her signature.

By seventh, I was a professional when it came to evading her during her moods. But there were times when evasion wasn’t the answer—if Nicky caused her temper to flare, I had to be quick to intervene, although it took next to nothing to make her shift focus.

It was little wonder I was the one who mainly took care of him these days. It was easier to handle everything if she wasn’t the one around him most of the time.

“Sweetheart?”

At the sound of Tammy’s voice, the fog I’d fallen into shattered and I looked up to meet her eyes.

“My own money,” I said, laughing a little. “It’s kind of cool.”

It was an act now. The poor little rich girl had a new car, designer clothes, and had been sent to Paris for a month during the summer after I’d turned sixteen. She shouldn’t ever complain about money. But there was a difference. People might not understand when it came to given things—all but forced to accept them because it went along with what was expected, and earning something.

If I could take this money, this job, and my brother and find a way for the two of us to live…

As if she’d read my mind, Tammy squeezed my hand. “You’ll make it out of there, sweetheart. You have too much drive not to. And you’ll take him with you.”

Shame tried to well up inside me, but I shoved it back down.

I wasn’t going to be ashamed of what she did to us.

I was tired of hiding it, but for now…because of my baby brother…I would.

But here, in this room with a check made out to me, I felt strong and certain…determined.

“I know.”

* * *

Nicky was crying when I got home. At fifteen years old, he looked more like eight or nine, and many thought he was even younger until they looked into his eyes and realized there was…something else.

It was developmental delay, one I suspected was caused by drinking while she was carrying him. I hadn’t ever asked her, but there wasn’t a time in my life when I don’t recall her with a “cocktail” in hand.

I do remember particularly bright memories from when I was three years old.

I only remember that time because it was when my father died.

He was killed on the way home from a meeting in New Orleans when a trucker crossed the line and hit his car, killing him instantly. I only learned about how he died when I grew old enough to learn how to research the information myself, because Mother never told me.

Some might think she was trying to protect me.

Others might think she was dealing with enough, being a mother of two young children and suddenly widowed.

But I’d never forget—or forgive—the words she used when she told me Daddy was dead.

He left us, dear. He was the only one in the world who really loved me, who needed me…he was all I had and he left us.

That was how much I’d mattered.

At an early age, I’d been innocent and had told my mother that I loved her and needed her and she’d pushed me aside.

I hadn’t lied—I had needed her.

But I didn’t now.

Nicky, though, he was still as innocent as the child I’d been that awful day, and when I walked in and found him curled up in the library crying like his heart was crushed, I wanted to break something.

The check that had made me so happy was tucked away in my purse and my hopes that maybe she’d have one of her rare good days and I could talk her into going to the bank with me died a quick death.

If Nicky was crying, it was because of her.

He looked my way, although I knew I hadn’t made a sound, and the moment our eyes met, he tried to dash away the tears.

I never told him, but Nicky, while he might not understand things on the same level others did, had a way of sensing a person’s emotions. And he knew one crucial detail. He knew I hated it when she upset him.

“Thea!” He tried to smile at me. “Hi, Thea, hi!”

“Nicky.” Holding out my arms, I waited.

It only took a few seconds and his face crumpled again and he came to me, hurling himself toward me and burying his face against my torso. “She hates me, Thea. Mama hates me.”

“No, she doesn’t,” I said softly, stroking his hair as I stared off into the distant. This was the hardest lie to tell him, the hardest lie to make him believe. But I continued to tell it, to try to make him believe. Because he needed to believe she could love him. “She hates herself and sometimes that spills out onto us. That’s all.”

That was one truth I believed—Melody Kent hated herself. She looked into the mirror every day and saw a miserable woman who was getting older and sadder and meaner and she hated what the mirror showed her. It made her feel better to belittle others, so that was what she did.

And maybe she did hate Nicky and me. I had no idea. But if she did, she hated herself far worse.

“You want to tell me what happened?” I asked, easing back and brushing his hair from his face.

“I…” His eyes skittered away from my face. “She told me I couldn’t. Not ever.”

Cupping his chin in my hand, I guided his eyes back to mine. “And I told you it wasn’t good to keep secrets from me. Tell me, and I’ll figure out what to do.”